Labour MP Wes Streeting and deputy leader Tom Watson have been exposed as hypocrites over their attacks on Labour staff – by their own words
Wes Streeting and Tom Watson have been making appearances in the media attacking Labour Party staff as the Labour right again turns its fire on the party.
Watson’s attacks on general secretary Jennie Formby have formed the basis for an array of hostile articles in the so-called ‘mainstream’ media. Streeting, for his part, contributed a quote to a Guardian attack piece on a a number of staff, including Jeremy Corbyn’s political assistant.
He also attacked Labour communications director Seumas Milne during a recent televised appearance on ITV’s Peston:
But both men appear to have performed a complete u-turn in the last few years. While clearly happy to publicly criticise Labour staff now, they are both on record condemning such criticism when the party apparatus was dominated by the Labour right.
Streeting tweeted in 2014 to condemn criticism of ‘staff who work for the Party or the Leader on the airwaves knowing full well they can’t respond‘ as ‘shabby’:
Watson also took to Twitter in 2016, after the Guardian published a letter from a number of former party staff attacking the ‘intolerable’ criticism of staff by left-wingers angry at the ‘purge’ of pro-Corbyn members during the 2016 post-chicken coup leadership election:
Watson also accused Corbyn aide Amy Jackson of leaking to media – before his accusations somehow promptly made their way to hostile media outlets.
Streeting ‘shabby’ in 2014. Watson ‘intolerable’ in 2016. The SKWAWKBOX wrote to both men yesterday to ask them:
What’s changed between then and now to make it ok?
Neither had responded by the time of publication.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
Both ‘Labour’ MPs have a track record of allegations of bullying women. Streeting’s conduct – in person, in front of witnesses – toward Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was described by MPs who saw it as ‘disgraceful’ and ‘disgusting’.
When Watson attacked Formby last year, he was accused by Cllr Yvonne Davies in his home borough of making Davies’ ‘life a misery’ because of persistent misogyny and attempted intimidation.
Most of the criticisms of party staff have also been aimed at women – although Watson has been embarrassingly put in his place recently by two women MPs.
When right-winger Iain McNicol and his mostly right-wing staff were running Labour’s administration, both Watson and Streeting found it unacceptable to criticise.
But now, when the party is run by people far more representative of the views of Labour’s overwhelmingly left-wing membership, it’s suddenly not only ok but apparently very ok.
What could have happened to make them change their minds and behave in a way their earlier selves condemned? Tough one…
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The hypocrisy of Wes and Tom is very easily explained. People who are just doing their job are fair game unless they are anti Corbyn.
In relation to Wes Streetings verbal onslaught against Diane Abbott I think he really shamed himself – a you man in his 30s yelling into the face of a woman in her 60s -and showed he is a sexist bully.
Just seen the latest demands from Hodge in the Guardian ,, demands that all branches that seek to minimise AS are shut down .
So just how will that work then Marge ?
There is nothing wrong with this pair…that de-selection would not put right!
Let no one be in doubt about this pair of duplicitous hypocrites. They have one objective, create as much damage as they can it doesn’t matter to them who’s in their way and gets hurt. Their bulling of Jennie Formby and her staff without any evidence to back their claims is outrageous.
What’s gone wrong with them both? What’s ever gone right with them. Pair of bullies who constantly go after women, especially Streeting as I know to my own personal cost. Let’s face it when it comes to Tom Watson trying to oust leader of the Party, we know he has form. He resigned his post in government in order to oust Tony Blair from being leader. If they don’t agree with him on everything then they are gone. He won last time and let’s hope he doesn’t win this time.
They both need to be shown the door.
“Pair of bullies who constantly go after women….”
I can think of several women Streeting and Watson never go for. Ah, now who springs to mind? Er…Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger, Joan Ryan, Angela Smith…I can go on and on. What do they have in common? Ah, to a woman, they are all Blairite blankers!
How amazing that anyone who is a socialist/left wing is fair game for them.
Their opinions of Jewish women in particular, depend on the politics of the woman in question. Many crocodile tears are shed over Berger, allegedly “tormented” (‘Daily Mail’) by the chair of Wavertree CLP, who strangely also happens to be Jewish, yet mention Jackie Walker and Streeting and Watson both turn into a skilful impression of Matthew Hopkins, the 17th Century Witchfinder General.
If you are available, please come along to support Jackie Walker as she goes to ‘trial’ for allegedly making antisemitic comments (in reality for being the wrong kind of Jew, i.e a. socialist and critic of Israel). She appears before a Labour Party disciplinary committee on Tuesday 26th March. I’m not sure of the venue, but look out for it. It is so very important that as many of us as possible come along to support her. Oppose the Witch Hunt!
It’s a given that anti-Palestinian attitudes in the Labour party are a mark of hypocrisy. You can’t hold such racist views and be honest in your allegiances.
Simple.
The following article about the JLM by Asa Winstanley is worth reading :
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/jewish-labour-movement-was-refounded-fight-corbyn
I think anyone who has viewed Ella Rose – former director of the JLM – in a weird performance on video (see ‘The Lobby’) would have to question the political and personal stability/rationality of those involved in the movement, beyond a driven desire to justify the unjustifiable.
P.S. Note the latest shootings of children by the IDF – somewhat more tangibel but less reported than the confections of Streeting and Watson.
I think any intelligent person can draw their own conclusions. Which means the media won’t, of course.
Great telling us all about these rats, but what will happen to them ? Nothing !! can say and do what they want! We can all see what’s happening , but try and challenge them and the leadership throw hard working loyal members under the bus ffs. More hypocrites than them two sitting in leadership , allowing people to be slaughtered ,without one bit of support. Who will be there next victim is what should be asked. It’s a joke and very demoralizing to see.
Check:
Adam Langleben
Ella Rose
Jeremy Newmark
Can anyone stretch incredulity far enough to say these despicable JLM people are friends of Jeremy Corbyn? My ‘Labour’ MP can!
I see the Guardian quoted a Labour spokesman on anti-semitism saying that “it represents 0.1% of our membership”. (pg 11: 8/3/19) The real figure of course is 0.01% (that is 10 times less than this quote and is significantly different. One is miniscule the other is unacceptable). I presume this is a misprint by the guardian but I think they should be made to correct it.
Note the latest in this new assault – the Groan allowing an extended and unchallenged rant by Hodge.
Pro-Israel or not, she certainly has all the marks of a seriously deranged person utilising fake victimhood and wanting to ‘close down’ branches.
What one notices most in all this is that there is never any journalistic question put, such as “But what about the horrendous situation of the Palestinian people? Is it antisemitic to raise this issue? Do you not support that effort on humanitarian grounds, as a lot of Jewish people do?”
*Never* put.
Note also it quotes her as ‘her drawing comparisons with life under the Nazis in the 1930s.’. Now that is seriously deranged. Except, ironically in one respect – the employment of propaganda tactics (constantly re-stating falsehoods) developed by Goebbels.
Remember:
Think link!
The following is from the Guardian interview with Margaret Hodge:
But Hodge believes the problem in Labour has seriously worsened since that confrontation last July [when she called him an anti-semite etc].
“What has happened under Corbyn is that antisemitism, which was always completely stamped on at the fringes, has been given permission to come into the mainstream and, like a cancer, is infecting and growing through the party,” she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/08/just-close-them-down-margaret-hodge-on-antisemitism-in-labour-branches
We really can’t let the Bliars go on on repeatedly smearing the left and the Labour leadership. We really need to complain en mass to the NEC about Hodge, and THAT’S just for starters of course!
Would the disciplinary p[procedures be totally overwhelmed if we started complaining about the egregious accusations of Hodge and her deranged and/or venal friends? They certainly “bring the Party into disrepute” and are certainly fictions.
My partner, who scans the press, but isn’t quite as absorbed in the intricacies of the pro-Israel lobby’s falsehoods as we are made an interesting comment :
“I keep on seeing these accusations, but I never see any evidence”.
Bingo!
When Hodge says that it has worsened (since her vile and fraudulent and premeditated ‘confrontation’ – ie attack – on JC last year), what she REALLY means of course is that SHE and her fellow saboteurs have – since then – upped the anti and brought their Smear Campaign to a crecendo in recent weeks, courtesy of the MSM.
Just noticed another trope in the Groan. (They really are trying hard today).
Another of the usual suspects, Jonathan Freedland :
“For 2,000 years we’ve linked Jews to money. It’s why antisemitism is so ingrained”
Well, Jonathan, that’s interesting. Because the recitations of that hoary old myth (which does have a pedigree in the history of antisemitism) recently have come from the smearers, as I recall, not from the falsely accused.
1. The designation of a mural as ‘antisemitic’ because it portrayed bankers which the *smearers* identified as cartoons of Jews . Actually, of the plutocrats portrayed, two happened to be Jewish – though I doubt that anyone would have noted that but for the smear. Except Freedland,- who decides to indulge the trope as “the notorious mural depicting Jewish bankers playing Monopoly”).
2. A weird fantasy promulgated that opposition to ‘capitalism’ equaled ‘antisemitism’ that was thought up by one PLP member.
Interesting that the article goes on without any evidence of connecting the current smeared Labour Party at large with any such lazy generalisations (apart from the falsehood noted above)..
Of course, Freedland is up to his neck in complicity with concocting fanrtasies – closely linked to the Jewish Chronicle and its hysterical fantasies about the danger of Labour supporting the Palestinians.